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Touch the wilderness

By John Thompson - posted Tuesday, 18 October 2011


Guests on a recent outback tour attested to the fact, their city friends and business colleagues believed any adventure beyond the Great Divide was dangerous and why bother, that the "Corner Country" is a foreign place and even the young thought maybe Burke and Wills was a rock band.

Understandably, we can't expect while welcoming migrants into our country they will come with a passionate understanding or interest in our history, wilderness or outback, so the process of disconnection with the wild is escalating with both population profile and generational change.

For instance, in an Asian culture, wilderness poses a sense of discomfort or risk, not to be experienced by an individual but within the security of a group. Sitting around a camp fire is something poor Asian people practice and therefore it is not necessarily an attractive or romantic experience as Australian outback tradition presents.

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The first principle of ecology is that everything is connected to everything else and a wilderness experience can therefore be the spark that ignites greater understanding.

But wilderness is not just about the condition of the land or our recreational use of it, but importantly the relationship humans have to the larger natural world. Wilderness also symbolises human restrain and humility toward the land. The wilderness can be both experiential and symbolic. It follows that decision makers, developers, investors quite possibly, may not fully realise the symbolic importance and value of the wilderness, of human restrain and humility, without first being immersed in it.

A search of "Wilderness Therapy" in the medium of Google will reveal an almost exclusive focus on the recovery of wayward youth, placed in a challenging or unfamiliar wild environment.

My belief is, the progress of western civilisation toward a time poor lifestyle and work pressures is such, we are witnessing a "shifting space" wherein the therapy applied to youth, now has an application to adults. We have doubled our life expectancies and made wonderful inroads into common communicable diseases but conversely a whole new challenge has emerged in non-communicable diseases.

Coronary heart, diabetes, cancer have come to dominate while mental, behavioural and social problems are in rapid increase.

Indications are depression could be costing the Australian economy many billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. Mental disorder is expected to increase toward 15% of the global burden by 2020.

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We are habitual worriers for the greater part of our conscious day, stressing over both important and lesser things.

As a nation we are spending more and more time separated from wilderness and in a time poor pursuit, snatching only short breaks, with barely the capacity to reach or truly immerse ourselves in the wild.

Escaping to the wild changes our focus and the mind goes "quiet".

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About the Author

John Thompson has designed and led guided tours and walks for Australian and international guests, into Australia’s National Parks and world heritage wilderness areas for 35 years, while also engaged as the principal event management and marketing consultant to a diverse selection of international and national sporting events, major industry expositions, medical and scientific conferences, community, fund raising and human endeavour events.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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